Earth failed. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, Heorest Holt, carried its precious human cargo to a potential new paradise. Generations later, this fragile colony has managed to survive, eking out a hardy existence. Yet life is tough, and much technological knowledge has been lost.
Then strangers appear. They possess unparalleled knowledge and thrilling technology – and they've arrived from another world to help humanity’s colonies. But not all is as it seems, and the price of the strangers' help may be the colony itself.
Although not bad sci-fi its connection to the previous 2 books is rather loose. The third book takes an entirely different direction, some parts resembling westerns depicting the early pioneers of the time. The weakest of the three books, 3/5 for me.
This is the third -- and I believe final -- installment in Adrian Tchaikovsky's acclaimed Children of Time series.
The action once again moves on to another alien world but with many of the same characters and species from the earlier two books. And of course we are introduced to additional new intelligences, as you'd expect from the earlier stories' trajectories.
However it took me well over half the book to really get into it. The multiple plots seemed not only hard to keep track of, but self-contradictory at times as well. Eventually everything does fall into place and there are enough plot twists to keep you intrigued right to the end, but there were definitely times when I had to force myself to keep reading as the frustration was starting to get too much.
I'm glad I kept going, though. In the last third of the book many of …
This is the third -- and I believe final -- installment in Adrian Tchaikovsky's acclaimed Children of Time series.
The action once again moves on to another alien world but with many of the same characters and species from the earlier two books. And of course we are introduced to additional new intelligences, as you'd expect from the earlier stories' trajectories.
However it took me well over half the book to really get into it. The multiple plots seemed not only hard to keep track of, but self-contradictory at times as well. Eventually everything does fall into place and there are enough plot twists to keep you intrigued right to the end, but there were definitely times when I had to force myself to keep reading as the frustration was starting to get too much.
I'm glad I kept going, though. In the last third of the book many of the earlier confusion gets resolved, and that's what's bumped it up from a three-star to a four-star review.
It is ultimately a good book in the end, although it's definitely more openly philosophical and introspective than the previous two. If you like Tchaikovsky's work and are prepared to stick with it, this is rewarding.
Really enjoyed this. Wish Bookwyrm allowed for half stars - would be 4.5 here. So many interesting ideas, explored well. Always kept me guessing what was happening, and the story unwound at a (mostly) pleasing pace. A slow pace, mind - not one for action-science fiction fans; this is very thinky, philosophical stuff.
A couple of the chapters didn't quite work for me - more narrative background than story, they contributed to the overall understanding but I found them harder to get through than the rest - but Tchaikovsky really does explore some fascinating concepts here and I recommend this one for anyone into this slower style of science fiction.
Similar to a lot of the other reviews I'm reading this one just didn't grip me quite as much as the first two books. I liked the folk tale atmosphere and the fact that it uses the first two books being similar to trick you into thinking that this one would follow a similar path, but I didn't feel that the alien life forms were as well explored in this book. We got very little on the actual paired-mind of the corvids, with most of the focus being on the two individual parts of the mind, and the other mind that possibly exists in the book is only hinted at vaguely. I enjoyed the ending, but not as much as the first two since the big reveal at the end felt a bit obvious (albeit the details were all different from my own guesses).
Overall this felt like the middle …
Similar to a lot of the other reviews I'm reading this one just didn't grip me quite as much as the first two books. I liked the folk tale atmosphere and the fact that it uses the first two books being similar to trick you into thinking that this one would follow a similar path, but I didn't feel that the alien life forms were as well explored in this book. We got very little on the actual paired-mind of the corvids, with most of the focus being on the two individual parts of the mind, and the other mind that possibly exists in the book is only hinted at vaguely. I enjoyed the ending, but not as much as the first two since the big reveal at the end felt a bit obvious (albeit the details were all different from my own guesses).
Overall this felt like the middle could have been condensed and that this book was mostly just setting up a plot for a future book without having much of a satisfying story of its own. That being said, I still enjoyed it enough to give it 4 stars and would recommend it if you liked the first two books.
Content warning
plot arc metaspoilers maybe? also for Nona the Ninth
This one took me on a very Nona the Ninth-like journey, from "I am following the plot and know what is going on" to "I am no longer following the plot, what the hell is going on" to "Wow, I did not see that coming"
There's no real way to state why I didn't like this book as much as its predecessors without spoiling nearly the entire thing. Suffice to say, the tone of this book is inconsistent with the rest of the series.